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Kamesh Madduri Is Named 2008 Alvarez Fellow

August 8, 2008

Kamesh Madduri

Kamesh Madduri’s interest in computers ignited at age 10, when the first wave of PCs arrived in India and gave him a new medium to play games on. Eventually this fascination grew to include programming, computer science, and finally supercomputers.

Now, Madduri’s lifelong hobby has brought him to the Berkeley Lab in California, as a prestigious Luis W. Alvarez Fellow in Computing Sciences. He will spend the next few years working with Arie Shoshani and the Scientific Data Management group, developing algorithms that will allow researchers to efficiently sift thought large datasets for the bits of information that they are relevant to their work.

“Great technological advances allow scientists to do a lot more, which means that the amount of scientific data that needs to be managed is constantly growing,” says Madduri. “It is really exciting to be working on large-scale applications, and solving cutting-edge problems that affect the larger science community.”

Madduri’s work will allow researchers to quickly search for relevant information when data is presented in a graph-like structure. Similar to the way social networks represent “friends,” this graph-like perspective shows how individual elements are connected in complex ways.

“On social networking sites like Facebook, you are connected to all sorts of people in different ways — you are connected to ‘friend B’ because you were former schoolmates, connected to ‘friend C’ through mutual friends, and met ‘friend D’ at a nightclub. A graph data structure allows you to see all of those different and complex connections,” says Madduri. “If scientists are able to study or analyze their data in a similar fashion, with a systems perspective, they may find unexpected connections, and that is very interesting.”

This past August, Madduri received a Ph.D. specializing in computational science and engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Ga. Prior to that, he completed a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in Chennai, India.

He currently lives in South Berkeley. Outside of work, Madduri enjoys reading, sipping coffee in cafes around downtown Berkeley, and exploring San Francisco.

The Alvarez fellowship, named for Dr. Luis W. Alvarez, the Nobel Laureate and physicist who worked at Berkeley Lab, was established to encourage the development and application of tools to advance scientific research.

About Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Computing Sciences organization provides the computing and networking resources and expertise critical to advancing the Department of Energy's research missions: developing new energy sources, improving energy efficiency, developing new materials and increasing our understanding of ourselves, our world and our universe.

ESnet, the Energy Sciences Network, provides the high-bandwidth, reliable connections that link scientists at 40 DOE research sites to each other and to experimental facilities and supercomputing centers around the country. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) powers the discoveries of 6,000 scientists at national laboratories and universities, including those at Berkeley Lab's Computational Research Division (CRD). CRD conducts research and development in mathematical modeling and simulation, algorithm design, data storage, management and analysis, computer system architecture and high-performance software implementation. NERSC and ESnet are DOE Office of Science User Facilities.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the DOE’s Office of Science.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.